Americans send huge amounts of plastic to landfills each year – almost 60 billion pounds in 2006 alone. Some plastic never biodegrades, and most of what does takes hundreds of years. It is difficult to recycle, and evidence of plastic's negative health effects is mounting. Then there's the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a vast, swirling soup in the Pacific Ocean where wildlife is threatened by plastic refuse trapped in the currents.

Last autumn, thinking over these worrisome facts on a bike ride through the streets of Chicago, I started to wonder whether it would be possible to live without plastic. It seemed unlikely, especially since everything in the supermarket is wrapped, if not double-wrapped, in the stuff. How could I avoid it?

But I decided to go for it. I would conduct an experiment and give up everyone's favorite polymer.